. It is an organization for all women in high school to inspire, empower and support young women to pursue in potential STEM careers. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Representation and empowerment in WiSTEM are critical for today’s world because it is one of the main aspects that will determine how science can develop in the future.
As most people know, women are often underrepresented in the science field. Lakewood High School’s sponsor and chemistry teacher, Elisa Sasserath, had announced that their WiSTEM club is coming back after a long summer break on September 6, 2023. They had their first interest meeting on this day, discussing what they would do in the club, presentations and more; mostly seeing which students would be interested in participating in the program this year at Lakewood.
Women in STEM is a student-led club at Lakewood.
It brings important knowledge to all different kind of students, focusing on skill sets and ideas to WiSTEM. Sasserath explained that the club is for all of the young ladies who want to come together in STEM careers and goals. “Women who are interested in any way, kind of coming together… It’s partially a social club.”
She adds that the club has been run by Jordan McIntosh and many more students. The students come together to do different activities and lectures. “So, we have guest lectures come in. We’ll have a full block period and we’ll have half of the class focusing on the lecture and the other half doing a hands-on lab related to that said lecture.”
This club invites the young women at Lakewood to participate given the many benefits that are included when joining. It’s known that girls can have better career options when joining this club.
Sasserath tries her best to be consistent with how long and how many meetings there will be for the club this year. “The meetings will be the first and third month of every month. Our interest meeting is the next coming week, and then we’ll have our first official meeting the 20th of September,” Sasserath said.
Consistency in this club is important to students because it can gather their attention, making them more interested the more it happens. This makes room for productive educational settings, like WiSTEM club in this instance. In addition, this club creates diversity in education for young women.
On a personal note, Sasserath feels inspired by the students in the club. “It’s definitely inspiring to see students excited about their futures and about stem in general. In our interest meeting, we talked about plans for the future, and everyone had amazing goals and passion for science/technology/medicine,” Sasserath said.
